What recruiting teams can do to increase efficiency during a recruiting freeze
An interruption in recruiting efforts may be necessary for several reasons - a product launch was not as successful as planned, to give teams the opportunity to recruit additional staff, or even a global pandemic. A recruiting stoppage could mean that hiring is halted for non-essential positions or even all positions within the company for a certain period of time. In this way, businesses can consolidate their current workforce and potentially reorganize to meet the demands of the company and its customers. No matter what the situation is, a hiring freeze ultimately helps a company save money on essential expenses and operations so that it can continue being successful.
This does not mean that talent acquisition and recruitment teams will be abandoned. There are ways to use this time to launch strategic projects which will have a positive effect on your skills, even if you are not presently hiring employees. Here are seven of the most crucial measures you can take to increase the business impact and prepare for success once the hiring freeze has been lifted.
Keep your existing pipeline warm
If the hiring freeze was an unexpected development, there may be candidates in your interview pipeline that you need to notify. Adequately informing candidates of their hire status as well as the status of their application requires a balance of transparency and empathy. By letting the candidates in your pipeline know that a recruiting freeze is taking place, along with a preliminary timeline of when your team anticipates making new hires, is the best way to keep your candidates in the pipeline.
Involve internal employees
It is important to involve the team in order to preserve and ignite their passion for the company. Furthermore, it is especially important during this time to work closely with the company's leadership in order to make the future business strategy transparent and support your team.
Focus on employer branding
A hiring freeze can give the wrong impression about a company's development. To avoid misunderstandings, it is important to keep your employer brand strategy up-to-date. Do not let a hiring freeze slow down your company's progress.
Also, consider encouraging happy and engaged employees to become employer brand promoters. This offers interested candidates a view of your company that goes beyond corporate branding and marketing, but offers a more personal insight into a colleague's employee experience.
Optimize recruitment process
If you take a step back, you may be able to identify areas of your recruiting process that could be revised and made more efficient. Recruiting teams can take the time to review many areas of their process from the application onward, not only in terms of efficiency, but also to ensure that the process promotes a positive view of the candidate's experience with the company. For example, if you go through the application for an open role from the perspective of a candidate, you may be able to identify process hurdles that could occur for candidates - such as difficulty uploading resumes or errors when integrating LinkedIn profiles.
Additionally, there are several areas of the recruiting process that teams can evaluate, including:
- Optimizations to increase data purity
- Assess your platform to improve conversion rates
- Updated careers page and job descriptions to align with IT talent branding
- Evaluation of recruiting for prejudices
- Evaluation of recruitment or sourcing tools
Invest in training team members
The Recruitment and Talent Acquisition team's strategy and professional development can be improved by training or certification courses for its members. By training managers and other team members who participate in interviews for efficiency, the team is also aligned so that all employees best represent the company in conducting interviews.
Make sure your recruitment process is inclusive
Companies are increasingly being judged on their commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion. They are - by the public and their employees - judged on their leadership team and their daily management. Take the time to make sure your recruitment process includes all candidates, from the language used in job descriptions to the process of how an interview can be best conducted.
This is also a great opportunity for teams to undergo implicit bias training to ensure that both HR managers and recruiters in your company accurately reflect your company values during interviews and commit to a comprehensive hiring process. Implicit biases can show up at any time - for example, a person's name, gender, ethnic background, and language skills can influence the decision. This can lead members of the interview team to build stereotypes around the candidate without having met or spoken to him. Assessing your recruitment and interview processes from start to finish, taking into account possible biases, can help eliminate additional and unnecessary entry barriers for qualified talent.
Develop a recruitment plan
As soon as your team believes that a hiring freeze could be lifted, make sure the team is ready to resume by putting a recruitment plan in place. It is important here to prioritize in collaboration with corporate management.
By doing this, you can also begin to reach out to your existing pipeline to rekindle the interest of candidates.
If we freeze the setting process, this does not mean that the business strategy or talent teams will be frozen as well. Recruitment and talent acquisition teams offer more to the company than just procurement.
